Political Debates Between Hon. Abraham Lincoln and Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, in the Celebrated Campaign of 1858, in Illinois

CORRESPONDENCE.

Hon. ABRAHAM LINCOLN:

REPUBLICAN STATE CENTRAL, MMITTEE ROOM,}

Columbus, Ohio, Dec. 7, 1859.

Dear Sir-The Republican State Central Committee of Ohio, beg leave cordially to thank you for your speeches in the State during the recent campaign, and express the earnest hope, that, together with the seven debates held by you with Judge Douglas, during the famous Illinois campaign, they may be published in authentic and permanent form. We regard them as luminous and triumphant expositions of the doctrines of the Republican party, successfully vindicated from the aspersions of its foes, and calculated to make a document of great practical service to the Republican party in the approaching Presidential contest. We herewith transmit you a letter, signed by our Governor elect, Republican State officers, and the Republican members of the State Board of Equalization representing the several Senatorial Districts of the State, now assembled here, uniting with us in the request for a copy of your speeches. If you can comply with this request, you will please send by express to Wm. T. Bascom, our Secretary, the package, who will superintend the publication of the same.

Very respectfully, yours, etc.,

GEO. M. PARSONS,
SAM'L GALLOWAY,
LUCIEN BUTTLES,
N. H. SWAYNE,

Central Executive Committee.

J. H. COULTER,

R. N. BARR,

WM. T. BASCOM,

Hon. ABRAHAM LINCOLN:

COLUMBUS, OHIO, Dec. 7, 1859.

Dear Sir-As members of the Republican party of Ohio, from different portions of the State, met together for the first time since the election, we thank you in the name of the party for the prompt and efficient aid rendered as in the late campaign, by your speeches at Columbus and Cincinnati. The pro-slavery Democracy, driven to despair by repeated defeats, entered the late contest openly ignoring a defense of the present Administration, and raising the specious flag of popular sovereignty, called the Little Giant himself into the field to tickle the public ear with rehears als of his "Harper's Magazine" article.

The experience acquired in seven pitched battles with him as an antagonist, enabled you to make such a searching and thoroughly practical exposé of the fallacies of his position, in your Ohio speeches, which were scattered by thousands by our Central Committee among the people, that Douglasism, with its inconsistent theory, that "a thing (slavery) may lawfully be driven away, from where it has a lawful right to be," by the action or non-action of a Territorial Legislature, in spite of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott case, was NO WHERE among the voters when polls were closed. Proclaimed victor by a majority of the popular vote of your own State, in the famous debates which have attracted the universal attention of the party as containing the doctrines of the Republican creed, thoroughly discussed and completely vindicated from the misrepresentations of its foes: we would request that you cause to be collected for publication in a permanent form, authentic copies of those debates, together with your two Ohio speeches, as a document that will be of essential service to the cause in the approaching Presidential campaign. The results of the late elections indicate a glorious triumph then, if Republican principles are properly discussed and rightly diffused among the people. The signs of the times bespeak, that there is a West, no longer to be used as a mere

voting appendage to carry out the schemes of other interests, but a political POWER united to assert her own dignity in the confederacy and carry out to their legitimate consummation the immortal principles of the Ordinance of 1787, under which she was organized, by standing by its champions and indignantly spurning the whole tribe of trading Doughfaces, who flout at the sacred birthright of their own States.

Respectfully yours,

S. WILLIAMSON, Cuyahoga,
ERASTUS SPENCER, Geauga,
A. C. RAMAGE, Belmont,
N. W. CARROLL, Preble,
S. T. CUNARD, Morrow,
W. S. RUSSELL, Sandusky,
P. N. O'BANNON, Licking,
GEO. CLIFTON, Lorain,
S. W. MCCULLOUGH, Logan,
SAM'L C. JOHNSON, Lawrence,
A. L. NORTHRUP, Darke,
O, D. BIGELOW, Hancock,
JAMES H. LADÓ, Jefferson,
JACOB EGBERT, Warren,
B. NESBITT, Greene,

SETH WOODFORD, Washington,
DANIEL HAYNES, Mahoning,
JOHN HOY, Summit,

WM. MCDONALD, Champaign,
AMOS CARR, Carroll,
WM. DENNISON, JR.,
F. M. WRIGHT,

響

A. P. RUSSELL,

A. P. STONE,

W. B. THRALL,

JOHN WADDLE,
JOHN L. MARTIN,
C. P. WOLCOTT,

ANSON SMYTH.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLS., Dec. 19, 1859.

Messrs. GEO. M. PARSONS and others, Central Executive Committee, etc.:

Gentlemen --Your letter of the 7th inst., accompanied by a similar one from the Governor elect, the Republican State officers, and the Republican members of the State Board of Equalization of Ohio, both requesting of me, for publication in permanent form, copies of the political debates between Senator Douglas and myself last year, has been received. With my grateful acknowledgments to both you and them, for the very flattering terms in which the request is communicated, I transmit you the copies. The copies I send you are as reported and printed, by the respective friends of Senator Douglas and myself, at the time-that is, his by his friends, and mine by mine. It would be an unwarrantable liberty for us to change a word or a letter in his, and the changes I have made in mine, you perceive, are verbal only, and very few in number. I wish the reprint to be precisely as the copies I send, without any comment whatever.

Yours, very truly,

A. LINCOLN.